"USO's Benchmark is the near month crude oil futures contract traded on the NYMEX."
However due to the recent depressed near month crude oil futures, USO changed it's investment objective. USO currently has little holdings of near month crude oil futures - Jun contract.
http://www.uscfinvestments.com/holdings/uso
What does this mean?
WTI crude future (Jun contract) rallied 34.2% today (as per trade time in the picture). However currently USO hold little WTI crude future Jun contract. Looking at the WTI crude future chain, the holdings of USO should rally much lesser!
Conclusion:
For investors looking to buy an instrument to track the WTI crude oil, USO should be under-performing the underlying by a huge margin for the recent days. Today alone, USO should under-perform by >10%!
